Medicine, Magic and Religion: Medicine, Magic and Religion

by W.H.R. Rivers

One of the most fascinating men of his generation, W.H.R. Rivers was a British doctor and psychiatrist as well as a leading ethnologist. Immortalized as the hero of Pat Barker's award-winning Regeneration trilogy, Rivers was the clinician who, in the First World War, cared for the poet Siegfried Sassoon and other infantry officers injured on the western front. His researches into the borders of psychiatry, medicine and religion made him a prominent member of the British intelligentsia of the time, a friend of H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell. Part of his appeal lay in an extraordinary intellect, mixed with a very real interest in his fellow man. Medicine, Magic and Religion is a prime example of this. A social institution, it is one of Rivers' finest works. In it, Rivers introduced the then revolutionary idea that indigenous practices are indeed rational, when viewed in terms of religious beliefs.

Genres: Anthropology

136 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1915

About the author

William Halse Rivers Rivers, FRCP, FRS was an English anthropologist, neurologist, ethnologist and psychiatrist, best known for his work treating World War I officers who were suffering from shell shock. Rivers's most famous patient was the poet Siegfried Sassoon, with whom he remained close friends until his own sudden death. Rivers was a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and is also notable for his participation in the Torres Straits expedition of 1898 and his consequent seminal work on the subject of kinship.

Reviews

[CM · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you are into what is in the title,just read the first and the last chapter and skim the middle part. Unless you are into medical ethnography,that is.

[Tahmid Hasan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book. Explains animism very elaborately.

[Ted Gideonse · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic. I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to glean from it other than "It's a classic. It's old. It was the first real medical ethnography." But Rivers does a great job of explaining why those nutty Melanesians think that they're sick because of some meanies' witchcraft -- they don't know any better, because of human evolution. Yeah, I'm oversimplifying, and Rivers' logic, research, exposition, and, amazingly, relativism, are all quite persuasive. And I'm not complaining about its length: 146 pages!

[Haley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ahead of his time, Rivers examines the relationship between medicine, magic, and religion. He highlights the debate between independent cultural evolution over diffusion and while his evidence is manipulated in some parts to fit his argument, there is no doubt that he has influences the work seen today in medical anthropology.